Publication

This paper (a) summarizes both the Japanese and English literature regarding the measurement of parental conflict following separation or divorce, (b) discusses that literature, especially, studies on the psychological effects on children, and (c) offers some suggestions for further research issues. Based on a search of an electronic database, two Japanese articles and 26 English articles are reviewed. Parental conflict includes (i) inter-parental conflict, (ii) being caught between parents, and (iii) parental alienation behaviors and parental denigration. There has been very little research assessing the effects of parental conflict following separation or divorce within the Japanese articles. Within the English literature, there are few appropriate measures of parental conflict and the results concerning parental conflict and child adjustment are mixed. For future research, it is necessary to clarify the relationships and influences between the various aspects of parental conflict, to develop a scale of parental conflict, and to investigate the relationships and influences between parental conflict, parenting time and quality of parenting.